We obtained records of 149 cases of reported physical and sexual abuse on unaccompanied minors by border officers. https://t.co/e0VSgPTJnD— ACLU National (@ACLU) August 10, 2017

“There is a clear history of agents and officers engaging in what I believe was serious misconduct, documented by my office, in many instances who received little or no discipline whatsoever as a result,” said James Tomsheck, the former head of internal affairs for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, who has become a sharp critic of the agency after being ousted amid controversy."

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University has just released a brand new web mapping application that allows the public to examine for the very first time the number of individuals residing in each state, county, and local community within a county, who have pending cases before the Immigration Court.
Using this new interactive web tool, the location of individuals involved in Immigration Court cases can be displayed based upon each individual's recorded home address. Where the individual is detained, the address shown may be that of the detention facility where the individual is being held.While TRAC's original backlog tool tabulated cases for each Immigration Court and hearing location, each court covers a wide geographic area - sometimes encompassing several states. Thus, only a very gross picture of the location where cases were situated was possible.
TRAC's new mapping tool, in contrast, uses the individualized location where each person appearing before the court currently resides. Users can therefore pinpoint with great precision just where cases are located throughout the country.

The latest available case-by-case data indicate that Immigration Court dispositions have dropped by 9.3 percent since President Trump assumed office. While a larger proportion of this declining total consist of removal orders, cases closed during the past five months (February 2017-June 2017) totaled only 77,084 cases as compared with 84,956 for the same five-month period during 2016[1].
This decline has contributed to the court's growing backlog of cases. The backlog reached a record 610,524 cases as of June 30, 2017. This is up from 598,943 at the end of May.

With five months remaining in 2017, how does Trump administration compare to the Obama administration?

Early indications would suggest that even though there is a marked increase between the 2017 data and data from the last few years under the Obama administration, the Trump numbers are lower than 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009 under Obama.

The following table from EOIR’s annual 2016 report includes information that can help with a comparison. It lists the total number of removal orders and voluntary departures for the past five fiscal years and begins to offer some insight into how the new Trump numbers stack up to the Obama years.One way to compare is to calculate a monthly average across each year. For example, in FY 2012, there was a monthly average of 10,419 total removal decisions, 8,323 non-voluntary removal decisions and 2,096 voluntary departure decisions. When the 2017 DOJ data from the release is used to compare Trump in 2017 to Obama in 2012, the monthly average for 2017 (so far) under Trump would be 9,512 total removal decisions, 8,331 non-voluntary removal decisions and 1,181 voluntary departure decisions. In other words, the current Trump monthly averages in 2017 are on par with Obama monthly averages for 2012. In addition, the monthly averages for 2012 Obama total removal numbers were greater than the total 2017 monthly averages for Trump.

In addition, if you take EOIR data from 2009-2011, the monthly averages for Obama were actually higher in all categories than the 2017 Trump numbers from the DOJ.

Drawing on expert litigators, Georgetown Law’s constitutional scholarship and a strategic approach to high-impact cases, the new institute aims to teach students to use the power of the courts to defend U.S. constitutional rights and values.

The Institute’s faculty director will be Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal, who has previously served as faculty director of Georgetown Law’s Center on National Security and the Law, has argued 34 Supreme Court cases and has served as acting U.S. solicitor general. The executive director will be Joshua A. Geltzer, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council (NSC), who also served as senior national security legal counsel both at the NSC and in the Justice Department. Rounding out the leadership team as senior litigator will be Mary B. McCord, former acting assistant attorney general and former principal deputy assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department, who previously spent nearly 20 years as a career prosecutor, including as Criminal Division chief and Appellate Division deputy chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Employing the model successfully used by Katyal in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld to dramatically roll back unprecedented government policies, culminating with the landmark Supreme Court decision in 2006, the Institute will pursue strategic litigation to draw clear recognition of constitutional rights in areas such as immigration restrictions, religious discrimination, free expression and privacy protection, national security, and whistleblower protection, among other areas.
“The Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection is part of Georgetown Law’s commitment to teaching our students about constitutional design and structure, and will help reinforce the rule of law at a time when legislative oversight is often limited at all levels of our government,” said Katyal.

As with the Hamdan case, Georgetown Law scholarship and students will play a key role in helping develop, execute and support successful litigation strategies that can result in groundbreaking Supreme Court decisions. When Katyal developed and argued Hamdan all the way up to the Supreme Court, more than 70 Georgetown Law students over seven semesters participated in nearly every aspect of the case’s preparation, and the case was mooted in Georgetown Law’s esteemed Supreme Court Institute. The resulting Supreme Court decision ensured that the Geneva Conventions would apply across the globe in what the government was calling the “War on Terror,” ending ghost prisons around the world and forcing the Bush Administration to end its use of waterboarding.

“The Institute will give Georgetown Law students incomparable opportunities to participate in impact litigation from the ground up in ways that will shape a deep understanding of constitutional law and the role of the courts in our democracy. We are honored that legal leaders with the stature of Neal, Mary and Josh are building this enterprise here,” said Georgetown Law Dean William M. Treanor.

McCord and Geltzer, who will also serve as Georgetown Law visiting professors, will launch a practicum course there starting later this school year. The Institute has already started working to support critical constitutional challenges.

Today the Institute filed an amicus brief in ODonnell v. Harris County, a class action suit arguing that the Texas county’s practice of detaining misdemeanor defendants before trial based solely on their inability to pay money bail, while others who can are released, offends the Constitution, undermines confidence in the criminal justice system and fails to promote safer communities.

McCord led the drafting of the amicus brief on behalf of dozens of her fellow former and current prosecutors from around the country. It explains how reformed bail systems have been successful in ensuring appearance in court and protecting public safety by using individualized risk assessments and imposing non-financial conditions of release pending trial.

“As career prosecutors, we know that using bail to keep poor people locked up for days, weeks or even months for minor offenses is not only unconstitutional, but also counterproductive from a law enforcement perspective,” McCord said. “The legitimacy of the criminal justice system is dependent on it being a fair system that does not discriminate based on wealth.”

The Institute is also supporting key plaintiffs in another Texas case, City of El Cenizo v. Texas, which challenges a new state law that seeks to counter “sanctuary city” policies. The law, currently scheduled to take effect on September 1, purports to make it a crime for police and other public agencies to pursue an approach to enforcing federal immigration law contrary to that officially endorsed by the State of Texas, even if they believe it is in the best interest of public safety.

“Like Mary and Neal, I have dedicated much of my career to developing and defending responsible executive branch authorities,” said Geltzer who, among other things, previously worked at the Justice Department on reforming intelligence collection authorities after the Edward Snowden leaks and at the White House on developing the national strategy to fight ISIS.

“However,” Geltzer added, “we also recognize the critical importance of respecting the constitutional and moral limits to executive power, and we will fight to ensure the courts play a critical role in marking those limits and thus defending our country’s vital constitutional way of life.”
The Institute is also involved in pending legal matters related to civil servant protections and freedom of expression.

Georgetown University Law Center is a global leader in legal education and the preeminent U.S. law school based in the nation’s capital. A world-class faculty of celebrated theorists and leading legal practitioners offers students an unmatched breadth and depth of academic opportunities. Second to none in experiential education, the Law Center’s numerous clinics are deeply woven into the Washington, D.C., landscape. More than 20 centers and institutes forge cutting-edge research and policy resources across fields including health, the environment, human rights, technology, national security and international economics. Georgetown Law equips students to succeed in a rapidly evolving legal environment and to make a profound difference in the world, guided by the school's motto, “Law is but the means, justice is the end.”

Matthew L. Kolken is a trial lawyer with experience in all aspects of United States Immigration Law – including deportation defense before Immigration Courts throughout the United States, appellate practice before the Board of Immigration Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and U.S. Courts of Appeals. He is admitted to practice in the courts of the State of New York, the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and has been a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) since 1997.